Hegar

@Hegar@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨better?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  When people don't like the present, they almost always assume the past was better. When people are broadly happy with the way things are, they argue the past was worse.

  Our take on the past almost always says more about our take on the present rather than anything true about the past.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's just not something I could ever get behind⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait so you would rather have shallot bread than garlic bread?

  Shallot > onion is just common sense, but let's not go dragging garlic into a fight it has no part in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Boxcar⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep! It's called primary endosymbosis and it's one of the coolest things around! (I think.) The endpoint of a process where two parts of symbiotic relationship morph into an organ in an organism.

  The first case of primary endosymbosis resulted in the mitochondria and thus all multicellar life. That's pretty cool.

  Another time created the chloroplast and thus all plantlife. Again, yay for primary endosymbiosis!

  A few years ago scientists discovered that it happened really recently, resulting in an organism with a "nitroplast" for in house nitrogen fixing. So in the far distant future there could be an entirely novel branch of life, potentially as different from what we know as redwoods are from cats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Boxcar⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Mitochondria are so much more than that!

  They have the ability to kill the cell as well as provide power, they can communicate and transfer resources to other mitochondria, and they might be one of the reasons that organisms need sleep.

  I heard a science communicator suggest that in some senses, we might just exist to serve the needs of our mitochondria.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT Is The Most Blocked Bot And .Christmas Is The Most Dangerous Domain⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It was almost certainly written by gpt, you can tell because it doesn't make any sense but still manages to be objectively incorrect.

  Information already is knowledge, and that's not what gpt does.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It Only Takes A Handful Of Samples To Poison Any Size LLM, Anthropic Finds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't know that it's wise to trust what anthropic says about their own product. AI boosters tend to have an "all news is good news" approach to hype generation.

  Anthropic have recently been pushing out a number of headline grabbing negative/caution/warning stories. Like claiming that AI models blackmail people when threatened with shutdown. I'm skeptical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problems Mothers have to deal with⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  She's depicted here with dark hair, she's just wearing a yellow headdress.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problems Mothers have to deal with⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There's a great story in i think the pseudepigrapha, where child jesus is playing with his friends and gets upset and turns one of his friends into a pillar of salt and mary comes and yells at him to turn the kid back.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You've probably met someone who has killed a person⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This this this. It's basically impossible to get that rich without having endangered others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you didn't vote, the current state of things is partially your fault⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Being angry at normal people because the rich have the ability to buy elections is not productive.

  After decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinfo, foreign interference, dark money and legalized bribery, US elections just do not reflect the will of our population. A famous princeton study showed that no major policy initiative has reflected public opinion since the civil rights era. It's conclusion was that functionally we are an oligarchy and not a democracy.

  The rich who run the show deserve the scorn and blaming anyone but them helps them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  North and south are fundementally different, climate and biosphere -wise, so i don't think it would ever make sense to people to modify the same word to describe two very different things. East and west maybe less so, but dawn and dusk are pretty important differences.

  Some polynesian cultures use two main direction words, which usually translate as something like mountain-ward and beach-ward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You gotta say "nor-nor-east" instead, that's a blast.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Temperature sensitivity feels like it should distinct⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are several more. My favourite is proprioception - the sense of where your limbs are. Phantom limb syndrome exists because we have proprioception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨coleoptera master race⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This was just a top notch meme. Informative and a very clever arrested developement reference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Samsung reveals first tri-fold phone⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess i don't really see the point. Is there a strong use case out there, or is this a marge's potato? ("I just think they're neat")

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was careful to say perminant heirarchies for that reason. Bao Jingyan said that power originates in the contrast between the weak and the strong, and the cunning and the naive. I'm inclined to agree.

  But we can have social institutions that break up and flush out these natural channels of inequality, rather than institutions that metastize them into heirarchies.

  Aristotle discussed a then-current idea to redistribute all personal wealth above 5x the poorest citizen. We could tax all inheritance above say 500k at 100%. Eliminate all personal debt every 7 years.

  There's a lot we can do to make heirarchies more temporary.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are lots of ways to organize people that aren't heirarchical, or that dilute or limit power rather than concentrating it.

  Directly voting for laws, appointing officials by sortition - like being picked for jury duty, pushing decisions down to neighbourhood councils, consensus decision making, a culture that always permits insulting the successful and plenty else has been suggested.

  It all comes with drawbacks of it's own, of course. And having grown up in a heirarchical society, it can be very hard to imagine anything else, until you read about all the times and places where people have organized themselves differently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There's a lot of neuroscience showing that social power suppresses empathy in the brain. Status, privilege, wealth, etc. make almost everyone less able to consider the pain of others.

  Most of us can be reasonable with people we know. But the socially powerful are making most of the important higher-scale decisions, and they are neurologically the least capable of making good decisions on behalf of others.

  Or that's how i see the problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  While i too yearn for the downfall of capitalism, pre-capitalist societies were still responsible for environmental distruction, slavery and genocide.

  As long as individuals or a small elite have enough power to enforce their needs over the needs of everyone else, we'll always have capital-b Badnesses.

  We have to usher in the collapse of perminant heirarchies, whatever form they take.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why the real poverty line is $140,000, this strategist argues⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Another point he makes is that the safety net does catch people at the very bottom, but traps anyone who climbs out. For instance, at $45,000, they lose Medicaid eligibility; at $65,000, childcare subsidies vanish.
  “In option terms, the government has sold a call option to the poor, but they’ve rigged the gamma. As you move ‘closer to the money’ (self-sufficiency), the delta collapses. For every dollar of effort you put in, the system confiscates 70 to 100 cents,” he says. “No rational trader would take that trade. Yet we wonder why labor force participation lags. It’s not a mystery. It’s math.”

  What? How does the system take 70-100 cents of every dollar of effort put in by low income people? Medicaid and childcare subsidies going away isn't 70-100% of the income of a household earning 65k.

  Obviously losing medicaid or childcare subsidies is a huge blow for anyone, but i don't understand where he's pulling 70-100% of the value of someone's labour from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TBH it's a really good deal.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What kind of head leaves you thinking afterwards, "i would pay for that to have not happened. But i'd only pay $4"?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TBH it's a really good deal.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What kind of head leaves you thinking afterwards, "i would pay $4 for that to have not happened"?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The House Of The Guy Calling You A Libtard⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That house looks sweet! Cool tree right there, plenty of nature, even a ramp. My appartment is less ada compliant than that.

  Also this post is some middle class bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scurvy ain't nothing to fuck with⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Always was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scurvy ain't nothing to fuck with⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wu Tang means "sugar free" in chinese so there are a lot of products labelled as wu tang.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Humans BY DEFAULT do not want to commit violence towards other humans, otherwise things like Killer's Remorse and PTSD would not exist.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Empathy is a trait that almost all individuals of many mammal species possess. Lethal intra-species violence is also a behaviour observed in many (all, i'd guess) of those same species.

  Individuals, their peers, their social networks, their identities, institutions and the specific situation all influence behaviour. When those line up one way, we do a murder. A different configuration and we do a cuddle.

  It makes no sense to suggest that humans are either inherently good or bad - those are artificial concepts that don't even have a fixed meaning within a single human identity group. At the end of the day we're just organisms exhibit behaviours to meet needs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Archaeologists Discover the World's Oldest Paintings—Made Long Before Humans Existed, and Eerily Sophisticated⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  All humans alive today carry neanderthal dna, meaning we all have neanderthal ancestors.

  I believe the current understanding is that sapiens and neanderthals were like lions and tigers - we are able to produce viable offspring, but not always and maybe only with a neanderthal father, not mother.

  We are a different branch from a common ancestor but they are also our ancestors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Archaeologists Discover the World's Oldest Paintings—Made Long Before Humans Existed, and Eerily Sophisticated⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Anatomically, for sure, but cognitively and behaviourally it's harder to prove.

  For example did early homo have grammar? Many think the expansion of erectus, esp. over water, implies complex language but that's hardly certain and there's a lot of homo before erectus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Archaeologists Discover the World's Oldest Paintings—Made Long Before Humans Existed, and Eerily Sophisticated⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Garbage clickbait headline 😮‍💨.

  "Some time before sapiens seems to have expanded into this particular area" is not at all the same as "long before humans existed".

  Neanderthals are literally our ancestors, they have everything we think of as human.

  There was a now debunked idea that symbolic thought emerged in europe ~40kya. The explosion of symbolic art we see then is in part because of preservation factors and how well studied europe is.

  It's fairly well established that non-sapiens humans were capable of symbolic thought. No one is surprised that neanderthals made cool art.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A hypothesis⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Any correlation would likely be related to socio-economic status ie class. Macs were always more expensive, that's going to skew wealthier, which has way more impact on developement and learning than which OS you used as a kid.